Hi there, i guess for some the above is to little info. Here's a little extra help.

*** DO NOT TYPE these ' ' or these " "...

Unfold the file Foldit.tar.gz by doubleklick on it. Now you will have the choice to unpack, pick your homefolder to unpack to. (your home folder is the folder with your name, /home/foo when your name is foo. When ready you may close all.
Now open a terminal (ALT-F2 type in 'gnome-terminal')
First we need to install a missing library. type: 'sudo apt-get install libglut3' ... follow the on screen instructions.
Now we open your foldit folder again. type: 'cd Foldit' and press 'Enter'
To start Foldit, type: './Foldit' ( yes with the ./ before it) and press ENTER! and it runs.

For the next time you want to run, you can start it up again with ./Foldit from the foldit folder.

*** if you get this error: ***

Foldit Error: The game has previously not started up correctly. If this problem persists, please install the latest version.

...Then remove the file 'initial_run' from the Foldit folder. for who may concern: it wont run well on an older machine.

Recently, parker25 told me that when he tried
to run Foldit directly in Linux, it was giving
him all kinds of problems, bugs, crashes, etc.
He found it easier to run Foldit within Wine
on his Linux machine.

He said that the Wine website said that Wine
is not a Windows emulator but rather implements
the Windows APIs to work on Mac, Linux, or BSD.
He said that you can run Windows programs in
Wine on Linux systems.

Thus, I suggest that if Foldit is having trouble
running directly on your Linux or Mac system,
you should try running the Windows version of
Foldit in Wine on your Linux or Mac system.
If Tutorial 5-3 or other Foldit ED Puzzles are
crashing on your machine, perhaps they will
work if you instead run them using the Windows
version of Foldit within Wine on your machine.